We welcomed Hitler, admits Austria's head

The president of Austria has become the country's first head of state to admit that a large number of its citizens welcomed Adolf Hitler with open arms when the dictator annexed the country.

Heinz Fischer said that a "not inconsiderable portion of the population" greeted the Anschluss or annexation in 1938 with "euphoria", despite knowing that "Hitler meant war".

In addition many had celebrated Hitler's initial military successes, he said.

Surveys show that most Austrians continue to deny that 200,000 people welcomed Hitler's troops as they marched into Austria, despite the overwhelming evidence that ecstatic crowds gathered at Heldenplatz in Vienna's city centre to hear him deliver a rousing speech.

The view most commonly held still is that the Anschluss was forced on a reluctant people.

Mr Fischer picked holes in the 1955 declaration of independence which he said had helped establish the false picture of the country's history which still endures.

"I find the version of history which it presents very problematic," he said. "It is full of cliches that for decades stood in the way of an honest appraisal of what happened in Austria and why it happened."

The declaration re-established Austria's sovereignty, following almost two decades during which it was part of Nazi Germany and then controlled by the allied powers: Britain, France, the US and the Soviet Union.

It stated that Austria was the "first victim" of Nazi oppression, an image which even the Allies helped to feed.

The result was that Austria was slow to recognise its own complicity in the Holocaust.

"Austrians were victims during the Nazi period but they were also the guilty," Mr Fischer told the newspaper Der Standard. "Here is the complete truth."

Historians described the interview as ground-breaking. In the early 1990s Chancellor Franz Vranitzky became the first Austrian leader to admit the guilt of Austrians during the war, in a historic speech to parliament.

But he stopped short of saying that many had welcomed Hitler.

President Fischer's interview appeared designed to take the debate over Austria's Nazi past one step further.

Mr Fischer said he also regretted that Austria had not reached out at the end of the war to Jews who had fled because of the Anschluss.